I rewrote the definition of Obvious Judas. The crowner says to "tighten up the definition" but I am not sure how to tighten the definition, so I might not have tightened it enough.

I have not yet deleted any examples. There is at least one example to delete: Edmund Pevensie (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) no longer fits the trope. Edmund is literally an obvious Judas, but the writer describes Edmund's meeting with the Witch (in chapters 4 and 5), and admits that Edmund and Lucy are moving to opposite sides of the Narnia conflict. In the Obvious Judas trope, "the writer has shown no evidence that he plans to turn evil."

I think we need to take that part out. It's terrible. If a traitor is Obvious, then the author MUST have actually left, you know, at least some manner of heavyhanded foreshadowing, unless the definition of "obvious" has changed lately to something like "completely out of left field" or "only obvious to Seers".

edited 20th Nov '12 7:32:14 PM by Pig_catapult

I think that's a bit much. "Evidence" is just the wrong way of putting it - it's more like "the author hasn't explicitly said the character will turn traitor".

I think that'd qualify as The Reveal, wouldn't it? Wait, reread your post. That. . . seems like pretty poor form Word Of God-wise. How often does an author actively spoil like that?

edited 20th Nov '12 9:00:11 PM by Pig_catapult

Not very, but as Kernigh indicates, it clearly happens sometimes.

(And personally, if a character is "obviously" anything, I think it's preferable in some cases for the author to go ahead and "spoil" it then it is to try and keep the reader in so-called suspense over it).

Ah, yeah, I can see that. I'd probably up and say it, too, if the fandom had already figured it out and wouldn't stop asking.

edited 21st Nov '12 1:26:02 PM by Pig_catapult

Ok, I've cleaned up the wicks and examples (moving bad ones to discussion) according to the revised description. Unless someone wants to re-rewrite the description, we should be done here.

To any Naruto fan in passage: I removed it because it doesn't sound quite obvious. Please readd it if you have a better written form of it.